The Federal Government has scrapped the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) and the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) and sacked their chief executive officers.
This is coming after the formal inauguration of the boards of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) and the Nigerian Upstream Regulatory Commission (NURC) on Monday.
NMDPRA and NURC are successor agencies of the DPR, PPPRA and PEF as provided in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, however, said workers of the three scrapped agencies, unlike their bosses, would be protected.
Sylva who was responding to questions about the fate of the existing agencies, on the sidelines of the inauguration event, said “It is now a matter of law.
“The law states that all the assets and even the staff of the DPR are to be invested on the commission and also in the authority. So that means the DPR doesn’t exist anymore.
“And, of course, the law specifically repeals the DPR Act, the Petroleum Inspectorate Act, the Petroleum Equalisation Fund Act and the PPPRA Act. The law specifically repeals them. It is very clear that those agencies do not exist anymore.”
On what would happen to the chief executives and employees of DPR, PEF and PPPRA, the minister replied, “The law also provides for the staff and the jobs in those agencies to be protected.
“But I’m sure that that doesn’t cover, unfortunately, the chief executives, who were on political appointments.”
He stated that the process for aligning the workers of the defunct agencies with the new regulatory bodies had already commenced, as the staff had to be rationalised.
